Final royal commission report to be released this afternoon

Commissioner Kenneth Hayne submitted his final report to the Governor-General on Friday, with the government response expected late this afternoon.

On Friday (1 February), Commissioner Hayne handed to Governor-General Peter Cosgrove the final report of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.

The submission of the report brings to an end an extensive inquiry. According to the royal commission, over the course of its work it reviewed over 10,000 submissions from the Australian public, completed 69 days of public hearings and considered thousands of documents provided by entities, regulators and consumer advocacy groups.

The final report will be publicly available once the report has been tabled in the parliament.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said last week that the final report will be publicly released at 4.10pm today (Monday, 4 February 2019), following the close of trading on the ASX.

Speaking to the press last week, Mr Frydenberg said: “What we are seeking to do is proceed in a careful and considered manner about something which is very important to the community and very important to the economy.

“We want to have a strong stable banking system, but one where then public has confidence in our financial institutions. We want a system where the public can trust their financial advisors, and can trust their banks, because we need a strong and healthy and well-regulated banking system. But we also want to ensure that there is the free flow of credit, that’s affordable and accessible to the public. Because credit is part of the blood of the economy, we need the free flow of credit and we’ll be obviously carefully considering that in terms of responding to the royal commission.”

He added: “What we also want to ensure is that we continue to support small businesses, and we continue to support a healthy financial system that delivers better consumer outcomes.

“They are the government’s priorities and they will influence and determine our final and formal response to the royal commission’s report.”

Following its release this afternoon, the Treasurer will hold a press conference at Parliament House.

It is expected that the final report will pick up on some of the themes from the interim report, which raised many questions relating to who brokers act for, as well as broker remuneration.

The commission had previously looked closely at trail commissions for brokers and raised concerns over conflicts of interest in relation to broker remuneration, and wanted to understand whether this resulted in misconduct or negative outcomes for consumers.

However, recent data from Momentum Intelligence’s Consumer Access to Mortgages Report shows that the vast majority of mortgagors are not concerned by broker remuneration.

Ninety-six per cent of borrowers who had used a mortgage broker in their most recent experience were either “satisfied” or “very…